Nov 22, 2011

We are THANKFUL for…

Hi everyone. Happy almost Thanksgiving! I’m sure most of you are in the Thanksgiving spirit, madly buying ingredients for Thursday’s big spread & prepping for a day with family & friends. I did my grocery shopping yesterday & it was a mad house (granted I took all 3 kids with me!) but I got everything I needed & only had to hit two stores. Phew, that’s done!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I created this mini journal called ‘thankful.’ For those of you that know me, you know that I love composition books. I love to decorate them, I love their size, the lined pages, the cost $1, the hard cover, so many things. They are a perfect way to document something special & keep it in one, pretty place.

So this time, I created this ‘thankful’ journal, but instead of leaving all the pages inside, I cut a rectangle out of ALL of the pages & made a secret compartment inside called a Hollow Book. And then in that compartment, I put a tiny little, simple mini of a few words from all 5 of us. That little mini I can replace every year with new little sayings from everyone.

The secret compartment was very easy to make. I Googled it & found this easy tutorial – http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Hollow-Book

I created the Hollow Book first. The process has a few simple steps to it, but the glue needs time to dry a few times so you can walk away from it for a while before embellishing.

I decorated the book with paper & then created the mini book inside out of index cards. I love those, too. I decorated the project with the Echo Park line of papers called Life is Good. The papers & embellishments were perfect for Thanksgiving with the browns & pinks & the stickers of words about family, togetherness, flowers, love, laugh, etc. So sweet.

I did a little bit of sewing. I first sewed two horizontal pieces of patterned paper together (do this three times – once for front of the book, once for the back & once to create a pocket on the inside front cover.) Then I traced the 5 stencil onto patterned paper, cut the insides out. Placed another sheet of a different paper behind it & then sewed it all onto the first sewed sheet. I adhered these sewed sheets onto the composition book with Modge Podge.

After that dried, I measured & then cut out a sheet of paper to cover over the inside pages of the book, leaving the secret compartment open. Glue one piece into the inside of the secret compartment, another onto the inside cover only glued around the ages to make a pocket & I was done with the prep.

Some little things I added: Inked the whole book & mini with Tim Holtz Tea Dye Distress Ink, spritzed it all with Tattered Angels Chalkboard Firefly Glimmer Mist, covered the spine of the book with gold Duck tape, smudged gold Stickles around some of the letter & flower stickers for some sparkle, rhinestones of course (I live in Texas, everything here sparkles!)

After the book was complete, I cut 6 index cards the size of the secret compartment inside of the book. I stuck them together with small pieces of paper, back to back. I then inked them, added some fun stickers & more Stickles & rhinestones. I had each one of my kids write what they are thankful for on a card with their name on it, as well as my hubby & me.